Rebuild
by cyberwulf
Summary: Set a year after Chosen. Giles considers his life on a sunny Saturday morning.


Title: Rebuild

Author: Cyberwulf  
  
Rating: G  
  
Pairing: B/G subtext.

Disclaimer: B:tVS characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Teddy and Rick belong to me. Spoilers: Takes place roughly a year after 'Chosen'. No A:tS s5 spoilers, because I don't watch it.

Summary: Giles considers his life on a sunny Saturday morning.

Rupert gazes across the playing field, watching as his students spar with each other on the grass. Beside him, his father Teddy watches the lower grades, a light smile of pride on his face. Teddy wears a black gi as a nod to his original, Kenpo-style training. He has been practising martial arts since the Forties, long before Bruce Lee came along and made them popular.  
The students are all trainee Watchers, and God, it makes such a difference, after so many years of disrespect and insubordination, to teach young people who want to learn, who respect his authority and do as they're told. He'd been reluctant, in the beginning, to take a teaching post in one of the many Watchers' Academies, but he'd had no real choice. There are hardly any Watchers between the ages of thirty-five and fifty left. Many of his students lost at least one parent in the explosion. Many of the dead left behind small children too young to begin the training. The new Council will not ask the widows and widowers of the dead to give up their children when the time comes. Many lines have ended; many traditional Watcher families have been lost. He isn't sure the institution would survive. It all rests on this generation training in the field before him. They are fine young men and women... maybe too young.  
"Rupert..." Teddy waves a hand in front of his son's face. "Are you there?"  
"What – oh." He gives himself a shake. "Sorry, Dad." He flashes the older man a smile. "Just thinking."  
He hasn't heard from Buffy since he came back to England. She said nothing when he told her of his decision, but then, she'd been cold and withdrawn towards him ever since Sunnydale fell into the earth. He knows she's travelling the world, because Dawn is with her, and writes to him. There are nights when he wishes he had explained to Buffy why rebuilding the Council is so important to him; that the line runs back for nearly a thousand years to his ancestor Athalstan; that they need some kind of organisation and he feels he has a duty to set it up; that he had colleagues who died in the blast and it hurts that she never asked how he felt about losing them. But she would never understand. With distance and time he can see just how profoundly selfish she was, and still is. Nearly a whole year and no word from her; the pettiness doesn't surprise him, because she did almost exactly the same thing during her freshman year of college. He didn't jump when she told him to and she froze him out as punishment. He still doesn't know what angers him more – that she treated him so badly, or that he stayed in Sunnydale just because she snapped her fingers.  
"Hey, hey!"  
Teddy stalks onto the field, shaking his head. "No, no, no. Andrew, this is light sparring. Light."  
Rupert watches as his father takes the blonde aside and speaks to him quietly. He is extremely grateful that he doesn't have to deal with Andrew. The boy is so pathetically eager to please, so desperate to be liked. Rupert despises him because that's what he became, too, in the end – a cringing, crawling, servile animal, begging for scraps of affection, just like the very first Watcher and every bonded Watcher since. A cave painting of the first Slayer, chiselled from its home somewhere in Africa and brought to England many years ago, survived the bomb blast, and now stands in the new Council Headquarters. Her Watcher is at her heel, nose pointing up at her, fur rendered in sweeping strokes of charcoal. When Rupert looks at it he never knows whether to laugh or scream.  
The black and brown belts are practising with weapons. His nephew Rick stands out among them, his long, curly black hair held back with an orange bandanna. The spotty thirteen-year-old Rupert remembers is now nearly twenty-one, touching six feet, slender and wiry. Rick looks up to him and has begged him to join his band. Their lead guitarist quit because of musical differences and they're finding it difficult to replace her. He is seriously considering saying yes. He knows the other band members; he's heard them play and they mostly perform rock from the Seventies and Eighties, none of this 'nu-metal' or soulless pop. It's so nice to be wanted for a change, and so he ignores the little voice that whispers that he should get some friends his own age. He doesn't fit with his peers, the vast majority of whom are happily married and have grown-up children in college, and holiday homes in the country. The only place he belongs is here.  
More and more, it seems like it's the only place where he's ever really belonged.  
"Time to finish up, I think."  
Teddy's voice startles him, but he collects himself, claps his hands once and calls, "Line up, please."  
The students all fall in, lining up according to grade and seniority. He takes his place with the black belts, while Teddy, as the most senior sensei, remains facing the class at the top of the field. He never bothered with dojo etiquette during his years training Buffy, but here all the Japanese traditions are observed, even when training is conducted outside because of the fine weather. Kneel, meditate, kneeling bow to the dojo, kneeling bow to the sensei, rise, standing bow to the sensei. The students disperse, putting their shoes back on, wandering back inside to get changed, and get on with enjoying the weekend.  
Teddy plucks at his sleeve.  
"Rupert."  
He turns and Buffy's there, standing a few yards away at the edge of the grass. He barely notices his father retreating. There's a tightness in his chest and it creeps up to his throat as he looks at her. She's put on weight and for the first time in a long while she actually looks healthy. Her skin is tanned and her blonde hair tumbles around her shoulders. He would have been overjoyed to see her, once, but now the love that always refuses to go away, no matter how angry or drunk he gets, is tangled up with despair, the kind that comes from knowing the person you love most will always put you dead last. Buffy approaches him, little awkward, nervous steps.  
"Giles..."  
He is called by his last name so rarely these days. To his colleagues, he is 'Rupert'; to his students, 'Sir' or 'sensei', depending on whether the setting is the classroom or the dojo. She reaches out for him tentatively, as if she's afraid that he'll flinch away. He lets her takes his hand in hers, and watches as she traces her finger along his damaged, irregular knuckles. It's been nearly six years and he still can't quite make a proper fist.  
Buffy licks her lip nervously and takes a deep breath. She looks up at him.  
"I'm sorry."  
It's not the words, it's how she says them – humbly, quietly, as if for the first time she doesn't expect anything from him. He is torn between hugging her and telling her all is forgiven, and callously retorting that it's too little, too late, and to go to a priest if she wants absolution. Instead he keeps quiet and just stares at her. Buffy takes another breath, as if to say something else, but forbears, risks a faint smile, drops his hand and turns away.  
She is almost at the verge when he calls, "Wait." 


End file.
